Report: Trump Manservant to Investigate Trump Grifter

Since the beginning of March, stories about ethically challenged Trump official Scott Pruitt have gushed forth on a near daily basis, much like the hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil a client of his lobbyist landlord sent gushing into the Kalamazoo River. In addition to his unique housing arrangement, the pollution enthusiast has had to answer questions about his pricey travel habits; his (denied) request to rent a private jet; his insistence on using lights and sirens to speed through traffic in order to get to cocktail hour on time; his customized S.U.V. with bullet-proof seats; two giant raises he gave to favored aides by manipulating the Safe Drinking Water Act; and his nearly $43,000 soundproof phone booth. (The administrator’s responses to said questions have been, 1) that’s an inappropriate question, and 2) there’s a liberal plot against me.) And on Wednesday, after the Government Accountability Office ruled that his five-figure phone-booth purchase was actually illegal, things seemingly got significantly worse for the E.P.A. chief when it was announced that his spending will be investigated by the White House Office of Management and Budget . . . or at least they would have gotten worse, had the person calling for the investigation been anyone other than Mick Mulvaney, recipient of last year’s “Most Promising Stooge” award.

Mulvaney, whose mathematical illiteracy at the O.M.B. was rewarded in the form of a second job gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told lawmakers on a House Appropriations subpanel today that he plans to probe Pruitt’s expenditures, particularly his “privacy booth.” Claiming he’s “not any happier about it than you are,” Mulvaney suggested that while he may have covered up for people (himself? The president? Javanka?) in the past, those days are over. “I’m not interested in covering for anybody else,” he said in one of the most glorious slips of the tongue we’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing.

While Mulvaney put on a good show of being steamed up about Pruitt’s taxpayer-funded spending spree, he also noted that he doesn’t believe anyone has ever faced criminal penalties for violating the Antideficiency Act, of which Pruitt ran afoul. In addition, O.M.B. press secretary Meghan Burris told Bloomberg that the office is “working with” the E.P.A. to review a potential violation, and that “this is a routine and longstanding process that allows O.M.B. to help agencies remain in compliance.” Which sure sounds like Pruitt is about to be on the receiving end of a strongly worded memo asking him to please, in the future, just run these things by Congress before going ahead and expensing them.

Of course, there is a slimmer-than-slim possibility that Pruitt will actually face consequences for his cornucopia of shady decisions, given that last June the O.M.B. launched a completely un-ironic “War on Waste.” On Twitter, former ethics official Walter Shaub initially said he believed Pruitt should be worried about this new development. But on the other hand:

Last week, when the Congressional Budget Office released a report warning of the dire economic consequences we can potentially expect thanks to last year’s tax bill, many people’s reactions were along the lines of, “Wow, that sounds really bad.” Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, on the other hand, apparently heard the news and thought to himself, “How can we make this really bad situation even worse?” And it seems he’s zeroed in on a plan:

McConnell is weighing whether to force a vote on making the G.O.P.’s temporary tax cuts for individuals permanent. The Kentucky Republican told reporters Tuesday the chamber “may” hold a vote this year on extending the tax cuts. While the 2017 law provided permanent tax cuts on corporations, tax cuts for regular people expire in 2027 due to Senate rule constraints.

While such a measure would be unlikely to pass given the requirement of Democratic support, McConnell apparently sees forcing a vote as a win-win. If it passes, he can claim victory (and credit for increasing the likelihood of a financial crisis). If it fails, he can say it was because Democrats hate America.

Trump pleased to see Larry Kudlow has been beaten into submission

When Donald Trump announced he would be replacing Gary Cohn with TV pundit Larry Kudlow, there was some hope that, as a life-long free-trader, Kudlow would oppose such misguided ideas as, say, a trade war with China. But according to the president, he’s nearly completely quashed any such impulse in his new National Economic Council director, and as a megalomaniac, that pleases him to no end: